Harney defends first year as Health Minister
In a robust response to a Labour Party motion challenging her record since taking over the portfolio in September 2004, Ms Harney said her record compared favourably with any 12-month period of the term of the Rainbow Government in the 1990s.
She claimed the opposition could not show any one-year period between 1993 and 1997 when Labour or Fine Gael ministers produced any lasting reforms.
She contended that Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan, as Health Minister, had allotted £10 million to waiting lists and numbers, but the numbers went up from 27,000 to 32,000.
“I am reluctant to take lecturing from those who don’t believe in collective Cabinet policy, from those who have never taken policy achievements, who are constantly carping and involved in negativity,” Ms Harney said.
She said that claims that the number of hospital beds had decreased were untrue - they had increased by over 1,000 in the past five years. She also referred to “major progress in health reform”.
The creation of the Health Services Executive, she added, was a “sea change”.
She conceded what she described as legacy problems from the old health boards, and accepted A&E facilities were still a “major pressure point in our hospitals”, with no easy solution.
But she said initiatives like an out-of-hours GP service in Dublin and moves to free up acute hospital beds would alleviate the pressure.
For the second night of the debate, Ms Harney faced a barrage of criticism from Labour, highlighting what they said was a health service in crisis.
Joe Costello highlighted the case of a 50-year-old man with heart problems put in a chair in a storeroom with three others because of A&E overcrowding.
Meanwhile, prescribing by nurses will be law by Christmas, Ms Harney confirmed yesterday.
Addressing the Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) conference in Mullingar, she said regulations would have to follow the legislation.
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